New research holds promise for lighter, tougher vehicle armor.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* The Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center continues to invest millions to improve the vehicle armor that protects troops from small arms and explosives. And universities are pitching in by inventing new life-saving materials.

Gen. Robert "Bo" Dyess, deputy director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center at the Army Training and Doctrine Command, recently identified "advanced protection" as one of the Army's top eight acquisition priorities.

One of the service's ultimate goals is to produce better protection, but at an affordable price, said Chip Filar, deputy associate director of ground systems survivability and ballistic protection at TARDEC.

"Much research has been done by the Army--along with industry and academia--on advanced materials and their application to advanced armor designs, however, armors using advanced materials have typically been too costly to meet system goals," he said in an email.

It's unrealistic to find a material less expensive than regular steel, he said. Some ceramic composites can run anywhere from three times to 40 times the price of steel.

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"The cost of these systems is important, and... we want to work to make them as affordable as possible, however, realistically they will never be as cheap as steel and aluminum armor simply due to the raw material costs," he said.

"We are working with the ceramic industry and with composite material developers to reduce both the cost of the constituent materials through improved processing efficiency, as well as to reduce the armor system manufacturing cost through automation," he added.

TARDEC is aiming for fiscal year 2019 for an "optimized system demonstration of new protective systems," he said.

The command recently awarded Alcoa Defense a $50 million, five-year research-and-development contract for various projects including a monolithic hull to bolster troop protection, and improved welding processes.

The latter is important because the seams in armored vehicles are the most vulnerable areas, Filar said.

When it comes to ceramics, plates that need to be joined create real challenges. The more complex the interface between two plates, the harder it is to confine the explosion's effects, Filar said. It requires complicated shapes, which adds to the weight and negates some of the benefits ceramics provide. It also adds to the expense, he said.

Eric Roegner, president of Alcoa Defense, said there are similar...